The use of disposable test sensors such as strips in the medical field for testing various analytes in body fluid is well known. The accurate determination of analytes in body fluids is of great importance in the diagnoses of certain physiological abnormalities. In particular, it is important that diabetic individuals frequently check their glucose level in their body fluids to regulate the glucose intake in their daily diets. The results of such tests can be used to determine the insulin dosage or other medication needs to be administered. In one type of blood-glucose testing system, test sensors, or called glucose strips, are used by diabetic individuals to test a sample of blood in connection with a hand-held meter. The glucose strips are used by millions of diabetics throughout the world on a daily base.
There are hundreds of brand names of glucose strips in the market. They are very similar in terms of sensor construction: i.e., a channel is formed between a generally U-shaped spacer and is adapted to receive blood from the opening end of the sensor through capillary action and escape air from the other end through an air escape vent. In order to reduce blood volume, thus reduce pain from piercing finger or other sampling points, the blood receiving chamber is usually small and, as a result, the sampling entrance is also relatively small. As the volume of fluid chambers in the sensors decreases, it becomes increasingly more difficult to fill the fluid chamber with the sample to be analyzed. It has been observed that users may abuse the test sensor by jamming the tip of the test sensor into the individual's finger, which very probably results in incomplete blood filling, non-continuous filling or wiggling of blood flow. Additionally, in some existing test sensors, it is difficult to position the fluid sample within the channel entrance opening especially for those diabetics who have poor vision and/or trembling hand. Besides, blood samples turn to smear around the tip of fingers or other sampling points. It becomes very difficult to draw such smeared blood into the sensor chamber. All of these phenomena may eventually lead to biased readings, and as a result, wrong dosage of insulin administration and even life threatening errors may occur.
Therefore, in order to reduce or eliminate such biased readings caused by such user action and/or reduce the difficulty in connection with sampling, it would be highly desirable to have a more user friendly test sensor that could easily target sample, easily draw sample into the sensor chamber, and alleviate incomplete filling, non-continuous filling and other issues that may result in inaccurate test results. The present disclosure is directed to a novel design and method to overcome one or more of the limitations in the prior arts.